Sex, baseball and stupidity

This week, as the baseball regular season wound down and the playoff hunt wound up, I wanted to watch some baseball games and get excited about the upcoming pennant races. Heck, there’s at least five National League teams with a clear opportunity to snag that second wild card playoff berth, and there’s a distinct possibility that two or more of them could finish tied for that final playoff slot.

And then I heard about horny Yankees fans, idiotic Cubs fans, and homophobia from a professional baseball player. And it just made me feel less enthused about our national pastime.

Example number one.

During last Saturday’s Yankees game against the Tampa Bay Rays, apparently one guy and his girlfriend decided that they couldn’t wait to get home and have some – shall we say – batting practice. So the couple headed off to one of Yankee Stadium’s restrooms, and proceeded to have sex in the bathroom stalls.

Don’t believe me? Check out this article from the New York Post, which in turn links to a Deadspin post with – ahem – video. Apparently the “performance” took several minutes, and garnered more than a few spectators. And just so you all know, although I have no idea what the girl was wearing, the guy was definitely showing off his CC Sabathia souvenir T-shirt.

Example number two.

During the rain-delayed Monday night baseball game in Chicago, where the Cubs hosted the Pittsburgh Pirates, one fan decided to show everybody in the stands, and all the people watching on TV, just how much of a moron he is.

As the Pirates came to bat at the top of the ninth inning, this moron found an empty seat behind home plate. Once he got there, in full view of all television cameras, he decided to pantomime various sex acts. Deadspin has the video clips of this moron’s tasteless behavior, and although I’m providing the link for you to see for yourself, this is definitely NSFW footage.

Example number three.

Photo of Yunel Escobar with homophobic message written on his eyeblack. Photo taken by James Greenhalgh.

Here’s Toronto Blue Jays shortstop Yunel Escobar, whose eyeblack stickers during last Saturday’s game against the Boston Red Sox had a meaning all its own.

Okay, all of you who took Spanish in school… can you translate for us what “tu ere maricon” means?

Yeah, that’s what I thought. It’s a homophobic slur.

Last night, the Blue Jays announced that Escobar will be suspended for three games, and the $82,000 salary he would have earned will be donated to charities.

Okay, did I miss something, or did some evil super-villain release a toxic gas over every major league baseball stadium that caused fans and players to act like total bonkbrains?

Yeah. I know that in the past, fans have – ahem – “gotten busy” at the game, it’s the kind of stories you read about in Penthouse Forum that start, “I never thought this would happen to me…” But come on, people, doing it in the bathroom stall at Yankee Stadium? Can’t you at least take a note from Derek Jeter and go find a luxury hotel to get your trysty frisky business done?

As for the Cubs fan, you got your fifteen seconds of fame, and that was twenty-five seconds longer than you deserved. Hey meathead, next time if you crave that much attention in your life, do us all a favor and just hold up a JOHN 3:16 sign in front of the camera, and stop acting like you’re a john looking for three minutes for sixteen dollars.

And Yunel… You have no excuse. Don’t tell me that it’s a phrase you use around your friends and family, so that it’s okay to say. And don’t tell me that someone wrote the message on your eyeblack stickers, and you never noticed it until you put the stickers on your cheeks. Homophobic slurs are NEVER acceptable, and putting messages like that on your face clearly states both your ignorance and your intolerance.

Ponderous. Simply ponderous.

All I’m going to say is, the only thing that would make this story worse is if I found out that Meat Loaf had re-recorded his classic “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” and replaced the Phil Rizzuto baseball call with a similar call from John Sterling. Ow. My eardrums.

Chuck Miller

2 Responses

Cubs fans are the absolute worst. No wonder they have enjoyed over a century of lackluster performance and a sad and pathetic existence. Cubs fans do not enjoy baseball, they enjoy drinking and being pathetic. A manager famously said of wrigley stadium and cubs fans you could turn all the seats away from the field and they’d still sell out or something like that.

Stupid crap is everywhere – but so is the good stuff. The key is to focus on the good stuff, not the fools and their foolishness (let some authorities somewhere handle that). How ’bout the AL East race? The Orioles won’t quit! And you just know the Red Sox, after all they’ve been through this, just wanna’ spoil it for the Yankees! This is going to be “down to the wire”!!!

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Chuck Miller: Writer, Photographer, and the life lessons I learned from Street Academy